


Unforgiveable

by adoxyinherear



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:48:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28393368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adoxyinherear/pseuds/adoxyinherear
Summary: Read on for a lyrium- and love-sick commander.--Responses to prompts from the Friday Night Dragon Age Drunk Writing Circle. Updates sporadic.
Relationships: Cullen Rutherford/Female Trevelyan, Female Inquisitor/Cullen Rutherford
Comments: 4
Kudos: 27





	1. Dominated

Cullen toyed with the pieces on the chess board with little regard for color. He had no opponent, so what did it matter?

He remembered playing as a much younger man in the Templar quarters of the Circle Tower and feeling an illicit thrill each time he moved a Mage across the board. There were some among the Order who wouldn’t use the piece on principle, which Cullen found extremely short-sighted. 

And a bit stupid, really. 

Even though he no longer lived and died by their rules, there were some truths of the Order that remained central to his world: magic existed to serve man, and never to rule over him. It was true in chess, and it was true in life.

Why, then, did Cullen feel his own heart utterly dominated by one mage in particular?

She’d been in the garden hours earlier, conversing first with Mother Giselle and then with one of the elven healers, as easy in her dealings with each as she was with everyone in the Inquisition. No matter their station or creed, the Inquisitor made no distinction. She had warmth and generosity enough for everyone.

Including her lyrium-and-love-sick commander.

Cullen had come to consult with one of his lieutenants and stayed to watch her - an almost unforgivable breach of his schedule. The Inquisitor had a smile and a word with nearly everyone and while gathering herbs, she’d unwound her scarf to expose her smooth throat, the delicate points of her collarbone in tawny flesh. 

He had not been able to look away. 

Even worse, he was here still, alone in the twilight with only a few gossiping courtiers on the garden’s opposite side. The candles in the chapel flickered, beckoning him to his evening prayers and back to work, but Cullen didn’t stir.

He had a hold of the ivory Mage in one hand now, the other braced against the table as nausea spasmed from his belly to his brain. One of the healers had explained his withdrawal would get worse before it got better, but Cullen was each day revising what ‘worse’ meant with more violent and more frequent symptoms. Cassandra would not hear of him relinquishing his duties, but how much more could he take? 

Cullen recalled how the Inquisitor had taken the news when he’d told her, her absolute trust in him, her respect - and something near enough to tenderness that Cullen flushed from more than just want of lyrium. He closed his fist around the white Mage and felt the head of the piece bite into his palm. He imagined her hand taking a hold of him, a light stroke, a persistent pressure, and groaned.

“Maker knows I’ve tried to fight my love for you,” he muttered, thinking of the Order’s teachings and his own long-abandoned good sense, “but I can’t help the spell you put me under.”

“Excuse me?”

The pieces clattered from the board to the stone as Cullen leapt from his seat, half-expecting to find her standing there and grateful for the heavy drape of his tunic.

But it wasn’t the Inquisitor at all. It was the Magister, his grin liquid in the darkness.

“If I didn’t know any better I’d think you were accusing me of blood magic,” Dorian purred, crossing to the chair opposite Cullen’s and sitting down, one ankle crossed over his knee. “Though I’ve never had need of it, where matters of the bedchamber are concerned. My partners have all been more than willing.”

“You are quite mistaken, I- ”

“You needn’t bother explaining yourself,” Dorian said with a bored wave of his hand. “I already know you didn’t mean me. The question is, when are you going to tell her about it?”

Cullen sputtered, wishing he had greater control of his faculties for the fortieth time that week - probably that day. He slumped back into his chair before carefully replacing the Mage he’d been clutching and beginning to right the remaining pieces. Dorian made his work a bit easier by setting a small light hovering above the board.

“I’m not sure that I can,” he murmured, not looking at Dorian. “Or that I should.”

“You’re probably right,” Dorian admitted, elevating a fallen Knight with a gesture. “She seems like the type who prefers to make the first move. Carry on with your wounded-eyes-and-repentant-longing approach and she’ll have you backed up against a rampart in no time at all.”

There was nothing Cullen could say to that, though he cursed his body for a response notably in favor of the outcome Dorian described.


	2. On Top

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Inquisitor is exasperating.

Cullen felt his stomach flip and twist as he watched the Inquisitor balanced between two weak beams, a brace of nails between her teeth and a slim board wedged between her torso and her arm.

“This is, by far, the dumbest thing you’ve ever done,” she mumbled around the nails. Cullen blanched.

“Me? You’re the one who couldn’t be talked out of repairing the roof without a professional.”

The Inquisitor laughed, sending one of the nails clattering to the floor.

“You didn’t try hard enough,” she insisted, transferring the nails from her mouth to her pocket, one pinched between two fingers as she bent forward to position the board across the gap. “And I was tired of getting rained on.”

“I thought you liked looking at the stars.”

“I was being kind.”

She hammered the first board into place, more brute force than skill. Cullen gulped as she wobbled slightly retrieving another board, nerves subsumed by lust when the wind snatched at the collar of her shirt – she’d removed her leathers for the job, and Cullen could see all the finer points of her figure from his current vantage.

“How, how long do you think you’ll be up there?”

“Why, Commander,” she exclaimed with mock sincerity, smirking through a crack between two boards haphazardly arranged. “I thought you liked when I was on top.”


	3. A Good Start

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Inquisitor is messy.

“What do you think?”

The Inquisitor stood in the center of a circle of parchment, some scraps folded, others rolled, bearing seals or filled to their edges with a scrawl illegible from the Commander’s vantage outside of the chaos.

“This, that is,” Cullen stammered, momentarily at a loss for words. He gestured expansively at the mess. “That’s almost exactly the opposite of what I meant.”

“You told me I should be more organized!” She looked pleased with herself, hands on hips, surveying the small mountain of unanswered missives, status reports, and requisition requests. “This is everything, all in one place.”

Cullen shuddered. He didn’t want to think where she’d been stashing it all, though he was hardly about to concede that the current state of affairs was an improvement.

“It is,” he responded slowly, with more patience than he’d ever shown one of his recruits. But his recruits didn’t get apple-cheeked when he flirted with them. “But this is just the beginning. These will need to be sorted and prioritized. Josephine will want to personally contact any titled nobility whose letters you’ve negle- you’ve yet to answer. Our commanders in the field will expect updates, as well.”

As he spoke Cullen watched color of another kind flood the Inquisitor’s face. His heart lurched. He hated to disappoint her.

“It is a very good start,” he continued, floundering as he followed her eyes taking in the amount of work before her. “I could help you, if you wish.”

Her eyes shot up, suddenly bright with feeling.

“Would you?”

The Commander’s own work awaited him, but it could wait. She couldn’t.

He couldn’t.

Stepping over the narrowest tumble of papers, Cullen pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“Of course.”


	4. Not a Lady

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m not a lady,” she insisted. “I’m the Inquisitor.”
> 
> Emotions wrestled across her beautiful face: resignation, pride, determination. Her keen eyes sought his again, and in them he saw something else, something just for him.
> 
> “And I’m yours,” she murmured. “There are things I require, but flattery isn’t one of them.”

It was brutally cold on the battlements. If he hadn’t already been grinding down what was left of his molars with nerves, Cullen might’ve clenched his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea, romantic declarations aside.

And she was looking at him expectantly, cheeks flushed with cold, freckles standing out like points of light.

“You had something to tell me, Commander?”

She was teasing him, of course. They’d long moved past honorifics, right about the time he’d discovered the scent of her neck just behind her ears, the shape of her waist underneath the light leathers she wore.

Grinning now, she gestured to the Mage’s tower with windows gleaming, to the brilliant night sky above.

“Did you want to discuss excessive candle use after nightfall, or perhaps a new constellation you’ve discovered in your spare time?”

Cullen laughed, though it was a strangled sound. She’d stepped closer, eyes heavy lidded as she tilted his chin down to meet his gaze. Maker’s breath, but this woman would be his undoing.

“These stars are nothing compared to the ones I’ve seen in your eyes,” he stammered, grateful that the frigid air had sapped his cheeks of color. Blushing would be intolerable.

“What?”

It was her turn to laugh, but good-naturedly. Cullen reached into his pocket, producing a folded scrap of parchment. When he spoke again, his tone held its usual tone of frustration.

“My sister,” he offered, continuing when her brows crept northward. Not enough of an explanation. “She wrote me a letter. She thought I should flatter you, that such a powerful woman isn’t likely to be treated often like a lady.”

“I’m not a lady,” she insisted. “I’m the Inquisitor.”

Emotions wrestled across her beautiful face: resignation, pride, determination. Her keen eyes sought his again, and in them he saw something else, something just for him.

“And I’m yours,” she murmured. “There are things I require, but flattery isn’t one of them.”

She took a hold of his fur collar then, pulled him close, close enough to create a warmth between them the wind couldn’t snatch.

“Would you care to elaborate?”

He stammered only a little, that time. Her teeth were shining like knives.

“Not out here I don’t.”


	5. Charming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cullen is awkward. The Inquisitor is a tease.

Cullen’s palms were as sweaty as a Templar’s at their first Harrowing - as his had been, what felt like a lifetime ago. He wasn’t sure what that said about him, to be as afraid of the Inquisitor as he was of a demon, but both were more than capable of overpowering him completely.

“May I join you?”

The Inquisitor looked up at Cullen’s request, eyes bright despite the poor lighting and the late hour. She wasn’t seated in her throne but at one of the tables a group of courtiers had recently vacated. She never sat in her throne, not unless called upon to do so. Cullen couldn’t blame her.

“Of course, commander,” she replied, gesturing to the empty chair to her left. She didn’t wait for him to sit down before holding up a bottle of wine, a further invitation. “The diplomats are resting their tongues for the night, finally, so we won’t have to share.”

Cullen didn’t think women as beautiful as the Inquisitor really ought to say words like ‘tongue’ around him, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it.

“I do not envy you, courting their favor,” he said, accepting the wine bottle. The Inquisitor had a cup, but there wasn’t a clean one for him. After a moment’s consideration, he took a sip and passed it back. “There’s a reason I’m not often allowed beyond the battlefield or the war table.”

“I expect you could hold your own against them,” she mused, taking the wine. “It’s just a different kind of fight. Words and bodies are still very much involved.”

The Inquisitor held his eyes as she lifted the bottle to her lips, ignoring her cup in favor of drinking as he had. Cullen’s throat was suddenly very dry.

He coughed and rubbed his neck.

“I’d rather leave that particular battle in Lady Montilyet’s skillful hands. Or yours.”

“Shrinking from the challenge, commander?”

She was teasing him. She had to be teasing him.

The bottle was on the table now and Cullen retrieved it, taking a deeper drink this time.

“I am simply aware of my limitations,” he said, practical. Only a little morose.

“Cullen.”

The playful note had left her voice, and she’d bent her head to draw his eyes back to her face. Her cheeks were flushed, though whether it was from the wine, the fire, or the time she’d spent running combat drills with Seeker Pentaghast that afternoon, he couldn’t say.

Only that the color made her lovelier than ever.

“I mean to say that we don’t all have your many gifts, Inquisitor,” Cullen clarified, reaching for a compliment and falling short. He tried again. “You could charm the tail off a dragon as easily as slay it.”

She laughed then, deep and clear and sweeter than any Chantry’s bell. It was too quiet in the hall when she’d finished, empty, and Cullen felt the sound had filled him up, too.

“I’ll make sure Josie includes that the next time she introduces me.”


End file.
